July 12, 2021

If one of your online accounts is hacked, especially a financial one, you could see your bank accounts drained and your identity stolen.

Digging yourself out of that hole could set you back for years and haunt you for more than a decade. Once someone has stolen your identity, they can apply for new credit lines and destroy your credit. Bill-collectors for liabilities they incurred can plague you for years.

When you renew your Meemic homeowner’s policy, you can add optional coverage to help cover losses caused by identity theft.

There are usually two ways hackers will access your accounts:

• By duping you into clicking on a malicious link that will expose your password, or
• By guessing your password.

Sadly, many people make that easy for them by picking easy-to-hack passwords. If you want to protect your accounts and your finances, there are some passwords you simply should avoid.

Safetydetective.com, an antivirus website, looked at more than 9 million stolen passwords in the U.S., resulting in this list of the most commonly hacked passwords:

1. Password
2. 123456
3. 123456789
4. 12345678
5. 1234567
6. password1
7. 12345
8. 1234567890
9. 1234
10. qwerty123
11. qwertyuiop
12. 1q2w3e4r
13. 1qaz2wsx
14. superman
15. iloveyou
16. qwerty1
17. qwerty
18. 123456a
19. letmein
20. football

What you should do

Safetydetective.com recommends that you use passwords that are at least eight characters long. Also, passwords should not be a common words or pop culture names or sayings, and should contain at least one capital letter and one digit.

To make passwords even stronger, they should contain at least one punctuation mark or other special character. For example: uSo38&_Xv3!0@

You should change your passwords every 90 days.

Finally, you should install a password manager and an antivirus suite.
 

This information is being provided for general informational purposes only. Meemic Insurance Company does not assume any liability in connection with providing this information.